By Dr Gideon Polya
On Australia’s Anzac Day, Muslim, feminist social advocate and humanitarian journalist Yassmin Abdel-Magied (who works for the ABC, Australia’s equivalent of the UK BBC) posted on her Facebook page: “Lest we forget (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine)”. Savaged by public outcry, Ms Abdel-Magied rapidly deleted the post and apologized. The post was correct and her silencing by rabid jingoists is a stain on Australia and an attack on free speech.
One can succinctly amplify Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s truthful combination of seven (7) words that so offended the rabid jingoists of imperial lackey Australia as follows. Australia’s Anzac Day (“the one day of the year”) commemorates the invasion of Turkey on 25 April 1915 by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) and Anglo-French forces. The invasion was unsuccessful and the Allied forces withdrew in 1916. Anzac Day commemorates Australia’s war dead totalling about 100,000 over the last century in the service of the British Empire or, after Pearl Harbor, the American Empire. Australia and the Australian War Memorial ignore the 100,000 Indigenous Australians who died defending Australia from genocidal invaders (the British) while massively – and indeed most appropriately – commemorating 100,000 courageous Australians who died overseas in foreign lands in British and/or American wars.
As a UK lackey or US lackeys Australia has invaded 85 out of 203 present-day countries (195 UN-recognized nations and 8 non-UN-recognized self-governing countries) as compared to the British 193, the French 80, the US 72 (52 after WW2), Germany 39, Japan 30, Russia 25, Canada 25, Apartheid Israel 12 and China 2. Australia has been involved in all post-1950 US Asian wars, atrocities associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation. Australia is an enthusiastic participant in the US War on Muslims (aka the US War on Terror) that has been associated with 32 million Muslims deaths from violence, 5 million, or deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity that killed 3,000 people, overwhelmingly Americans. There are presently 65 million refugees in the World with about half being Muslim refugees from genocidal wars conducted by the US and its allies, notably the UK, Australia, Canada, France and US-, UK-, Australia- , Canada- and France-backed Apartheid Israel. The refugee breakdown is circa 7 million (Palestine), 5-6 million (Iraq), 11 million (Syria), 2 million (Somalia), 1 million (Libya), 3 million (Afghanistan), 2 million (Pakistan), 0.5 million (Yemen). US lackey Australia is complicit in an ongoing Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide. In addition to various involvements in Libya, Syira, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, Australia is targeting US drone strikes in starving Somalia and starving Yemen (Gideon Polya, “Paris Atrocity Context: 27 Million Muslim Avoidable Deaths From Imposed Deprivation In 20 Countries Violated By US Alliance Since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 22 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya221115.htm ; “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/; “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ ; “Stop state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/ ).
Back to Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s “Lest we forget (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine)” – “Lest we forget” is absolutely correct. Silence is complicity and silencing truth-tellers like Yassmin Abdel-Magied is worse than mere complicity. Australia has a policy of highly abusively and indefinitely imprisoning refugees (mostly Muslims) without charge or trial in remote concentration camps on the Island Nation of Nauru and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Australia is presently involved in its Third Syrian War in a century (it previously invaded Syria in WW1 and WW2). In the present US-backed Syrian Civil War 0.5 million Syrians have died violently, a similar number have died from war-imposed deprivation and 11 million refugees have been generated . ANZAC forces commenced the Palestinian Genocide and Bedouin Genocide with the WW1 conquest of Palestine that led to a famine that killed 100,000 Palestinians, and with the December 1918 Surafend Massacre of Palestinians, including Bedouin. ANZAC forces helped to brutally suppress pro-democracy Egyptians in 1919.
Duncan Fine (a lawyer and Director and Special Counsel for The National Justice Project) has come to Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s defence and offered this fine opinion: “Last month Attorney-General George Brandis called for changes to the “offend, insult and humiliate” clause in Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, saying that they stifled freedom of speech and that was “one of the key things the Anzacs fought for”. With perfect timing, yesterday, on Anzac Day, we got to see whether he was right. Because Yassmin Abdel-Magied, the young social advocate, part-time ABC presenter and writer posted on her Facebook page: “Lest we forget (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine)”. She deleted the post within hours and wrote a brief apology… To paraphrase George Brandis, the ability to bravely say what you think, no matter how unpopular, is exactly why the Anzacs fought at Gallipoli. Accordingly, we should celebrate Abdel-Magied, not attack her” (Duncan Fine , “We should celebrate Yassmin Abdel-Magied , not attack her”, Sydney Morning Herald , 26 April 2017: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/we-should-celebrate-yassmin-abdelmagied-not-attack-her-20170426-gvsp1k.html ).
I wrote a letter of support for Yassmin Abdel-Magied to her fellow ABC journalists (however the Silence has been Deafening):
LETTER:
“Dear ABC journalist,
This is a letter of support for a courageous and humane ABC journalist, Ms Yassmin Abdel-Magied, who was absolutely correct to say in effect: “Lest we forget all the victims of war” but has been savaged on that account by the Yellow Press of the Dirty Digger [media mogul Rupert Murdoch] and by a vomit of Coalition politicians.
ANZAC forces commenced the Palestinian Genocide and Bedouin Genocide with the WW1 conquest of Palestine that led to a famine that killed 100,000 Palestinians and with the December 1918 Surafend Massacre of Palestinians, including Bedouin. 25 April is Anzac Day for Australians and New Zealanders, a day on which they quite rightly remember their courageous veterans and courageous military war dead at cenotaph memorial services and veteran parades in cities and in country towns. The key phrase associated with Anzac Day is “lest we forget” – lest we forget the courageous and loyal men and women who served or died in the service of their country in war, whether or not the war was just or lawful. However “lest we forget” unfortunately does not extend to the victims of rape in war or the millions of “collateral” civilian deaths. Nor does “lest we forget” extend to the war criminal politicians, lobbyists, media and corporations primarily responsible for these war crimes. 25 April is Anzac Day commemorating the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) invasion of Turkey at Gallipoli in 1915, the day after the commencement of the Turkish Armenian Genocide (1.5 million Armenians killed) that was precipitated by the prior prolonged Allied naval bombardment. On Anzac Day Australians utterly ignore Australia’s complicity in horrendous UK and US war crimes. Australia has a secret genocide history that is resolutely ignored by White Australians.
For details of 40 deadly atrocities in which Australia has been complicit see Gideon Polya, “On Anzac Day Australia ignores its complicity in horrendous war crimes & climate crimes”, Countercurrents, 24 April 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/04/24/on-anzac-day-australia-ignores-its-complicity-in-horrendous-war-crimes-climate-crimes/ .
My detailed and documented analysis was published on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (Armenian Genocide Memorial Day) (24 April) for a world-wide audience and concludes: “On Anzac Day Australians rightly remember the sacrifice of their courageous veterans and courageous war dead. However, on such solemn memorial occasions Australians, all members of the US Alliance and indeed all of Humanity must also publicly remember the horrendous civilian deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation and other atrocities, notably rape and other violent and traumatic subjugation, associated with war. Lest we forget. As Albert Einstein famously observed: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”. Sustained Mainstream media fake news through lying by omission means that a poorly-informed Humanity is badly running out of time to save the planet. Examine the above catalogue of war criminal, climate criminal or sociopathic Australian complicities and determine the complicity of your country in egregious inhumanity or egregious threats to Humanity. Please tell everyone you can.”
Yours sincerely, Dr, Gideon Polya, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia”
Since the terror hysteria occasioned by the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity that killed 3,000 people, mostly Americans, there has been a huge increase in anti-Arab anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, warmongering and jingoism within the US Alliance, including Australia. Each year Australian Mainstream media, politicians and academic presstitutes join in an outpouring of fervent jingoism on the occasion of Anzac Day. Alex Bainbridge commented thus in the Green left Weekly on this most recent Anzac Day (2017): “Today — ANZAC Day — is the climax of the orgy of nationalism and militarism we’ve been subjected to in recent times, ostensibly to remember the ordinary people who responded to the lies of the government by fighting and dying in an unjust war. Of course progressive people have sympathy for the soldiers who died as well as the soldiers who didn’t die but nevertheless witnessed or experienced terrible things. But it is also fair to point out the hypocrisy of the official propaganda machine” (Alex Bainbridge, “Justice and hypocrisy on Anzac Day), Green Left Weekly, 25 April 2017: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/justice-and-hypocrisy-anzac-day ).
Honest and forthright Australian journalist Guy Rundle writing in the independent Australian web magazine Crikey on the centenary of the futile and bloody 1915 ANZAC and Allied invasion of Turkey (2015): “As Anzac Day approaches, the World War I wars have started up again! About ten years ago, WWI ceased to be a futile struggle and became a struggle against German militarism. The reason was obvious: as the Iraq War bogged down, the usual historical argument for war — the failure of “appeasing” Hitler — stopped working. We needed the example of a meaningful quagmire, and so WWI was it, the revision starting almost to the day that the last living witnesses of the conflict died. But Turkey has always been a problem in this — there was nothing to pin on the rather torpid empire, which was attacked purely as a way to cut through to central Europe and open a second front (and then carve up its provinces into colonies). That problem has become especially acute now that we are attempting to turn Gallipoli into something other than meaningless slaughter… Meanwhile, there’s probably at least one truth and reconciliation commission that Australians should be more interested in, and that’s to do with a war closer to home — the frontier massacres of Aborigines, which continued right up to and beyond WWI, and which shaped the attitudes of many of the country kids who became the Diggers. There’s a link there, too. The larrikin image of the Anzacs that we celebrate may have come from an irreverence to authority in the face of British disdain, but much of that disdain came from the fact that some, perhaps many, Australian troops were far more willing to kill Arab civilians than British soldiers were, and Australian troops were notorious for it. Why? Because they’d already become comfortable and relaxed about killing brown people at home, and Arabs were just a different shade” (Guy Rundle, “Rundle: the Right really do not want to open the Anzac can of worms”, Crikey, 16 April 2015: https://www.crikey.com.au/2015/04/16/rundle-the-right-really-do-not-want-to-open-the-anzac-can-of-worms/ )
Guy Rundle is correct about the (ongoing) Australian Aboriginal Genocide. Australia (like Apartheid Israel that Zionist-subverted, US lackey Australia backs with a fervency second only to that of the Zionist-subverted US), arose through racist European colonization and ongoing genocide of the Indigenous population. Thus the Indigenous Australian population dropped from about 1 million in 1788 to about 0.1 million a century after invasion due to violence, dispossession, disease and deprivation. The Aboriginal Genocide continues with about 4,000 Indigenous Australians dying avoidably each year. Indeed about 2 million Aborigines have died untimely deaths from violence, 0.1 million, or deprivation and disease, 1.9 million, since 1788. There were up to 750 unique Aboriginal groups and associated languages and dialects in 1788 but only 150 remain with all but 20 endangered. Aboriginal Ethnocide (Aboriginal Cultural Genocide) continues through deprivation, removal of bilingual education and continued removal of Indigenous children from their mothers at a record rate. About 0.1 million Indigenous Australian died violently in the “frontier wars”, with violent extermination of Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal, Aborigines) only ceasing after the Coniston Massacre in 1928 in Central Australia (Gideon Polya, “Australian PM Turnbull backs genocidal Apartheid Israel with falsehood and exceptionalism”, Countercurrents, 24 February 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/02/24/australia-pm-turnbull-backs-genocidal-apartheid-israel-with-falsehood-and-exceptionalism/ ; “Aboriginal Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/ .)
Crikey published my following comments on Guy Rundle’s truth-telling: “Congratulations to Guy Rundle for his powerful, truth-telling antidote to 100 years of Australian warmongering propaganda and mythologizing. History ignored yields history repeated and Australia is now engaged in its Seventh Iraq War, this year marking not just the centenary of Australia’s disaster at Gallipoli (8,000 Australians killed, about 700 from disease) and the Armenian Genocide (1.5 million Armenians killed) but also the start of Australia’s First Iraq War (see Gideon Polya, “Australia’s First Iraq War” , MWC News, 28 February 2015 : http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/50028-australias-seventh-iraq-war.html ). However some corrections and amplifications below: 1. After months of Allied shelling in the Dardanelles, the Turkish Armenian Genocide began on 24 April 2015, the eve of the Anzac landing, with the round-up of Armenian community leaders – indeed 24 April is commemorated as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (see Gideon Polya, ‘Australian ANZAC Day, Armenian Genocide Day Of Remembrance And Australia’s Secret Genocide History”, Countercurrents, 24 March, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya240413.htm ). 2. Australia was complicit in the WW2 Bengali Holocaust (the 1942-1945 Bengal Famine; 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death by the British ) by withholding food from starving India from its huge wartime wheat stores (see “Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine” writings of Dr Gideon Polya”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust and Gideon Polya (2011), “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”, Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm ). 3. Turkey is but 1 out of 85 countries that Australia has invaded as a UK lackey or a US lackey with variously disastrous short-term and long-term consequences (see Gideon Polya, “As UK Lackeys Or US Lackeys Australians Have Invaded 85 Countries (British 193, French 80, US 70)”, Countercurrents, 9 February, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya090215.htm and Gideon Polya (2013), “Review: “The Cambridge History Of Australia” Ignores Australian Involvement In 30 Genocides”, Countercurrents, 14 October, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya141013.htm ).”
Back in 2015, Scott McIntyre, a courageous young sports journalist with Australia’s substantially taxpayer-funded, multicultural Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), was sacked after he tweeted a succession of truthful anti-war comments on Anzac Day (25 April and Australia’s more important of 2 major war dead remembrance days, the other being the WW1-end Remembrance Day on 11 November, also the date in 1975 on which progressive Australian PM Gough Whitlam was sacked in a US CIA-backed Coup). Only a few decent Australians – most notably Guy Rundle, John Pilger (outstanding expatriate Australian journalist), Greg Barnes (a barrister and a spokesman for the Australian Lawyers Alliance.), the NSW Council for Civil Liberties and myself – came to his defence, and the rest was silence or strong condemnation of McIntyre from politicians , journalists and commentators . Free speech was trashed in jingoistic, pro-war , US lackey, endlessly war mongering and human rights-abusing Australia (Gideon Polya, “Australia trashes free speech – SBS sacks journalist Scott McIntyre over anti-war tweets.”, Countercurrents, 4 April 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya040515.htm ).
Indeed Guy Rundle commented thus on Anzac Day and Scott McIntyre (2015): “The [1916 Dublin, Ireland] Easter Rising was worth becoming a martyr for, but Anzac Day collapses under the weight of its own meaninglessness. That we were defeated at Gallipoli was unquestionably the best thing, a demonstration to the world that the Europeans could be stopped from turning the whole world into their empire. The meaning of the deaths of Anzacs, as an event, can only come from defeat. It was necessary to a good result that we be thrown back into the sea. The private and particular meanings we make of the invasion is a way of avoiding that melancholy truth.… Scott McIntyre’s tweets were a related example — he was just the first person in the mainstream meeja to crack. The fact that the Minister of Communications [the oh-so-charming, all-smiles, ostensible liberal but US lackey Rightist and lipstick-on-a-pig Malcolm Turmbull – now PM of Australia] felt the need to step in on four tweets shows how brittle the whole thing has become” (Guy Rundle, “Rundle – on Anzac Day in Dublin and a cause worth dying for”, Crikey, 27 April 2015: https://www.crikey.com.au/2015/04/27/rundle-on-anzac-day-in-dublin-and-a-cause-worth-dying-for/ ).
The jingoists, warmongers, and war-glorifiers falsely praise themselves for upholding national security – however the opposite is true at a very fundamental level. The jingoists and warmongers endanger Humanity by falsehood and censorship. Fundamentally , rational risk management that is crucial for societal safety, successively involves (a) accurate reportage, (b) scientific analysis (this involving the critical testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses) and (c) informed systemic change to minimize risk. Unfortunately this is turned on its head by jingoist warmongers through (a) lying, censorship and intimidation, (b) anti-science spin-based analysis (this involving the selective use of asserted facts to support a partisan position) and (c) counterproductive, reportage-threatening blame and shame, with the ultimate obscenities being violence and war.
Thus warmongering lunacy must be opposed by decent, sane people everywhere. The Korean War resulted in the deaths of up to 28% of the North Korean population by US saturation bombing and turned North Korea into a one-party state and military fortress that has now acquired several nuclear bombs. US lackey Australia has joined threatening Trump jingoism over North Korea which has responded in kind with this appalling, horrifying and chilling threat: “If Australia persists in following the US’ moves to isolate and stifle North Korea … this will be a suicidal act of coming within the range of the nuclear strike of the strategic force of North Korea”. Of course one notes that Australia is complicit in US nuclear terrorism via electronic tracking facilities such as that at Pine Gap in Central Australia and through hosting US ship-borne nuclear weapons – Australia thus helps the US threaten all nations on earth with nuclear annihilation. ANU Professor Leszek Buszynski has commented: “This is a [North Korean] regime that fears the United States may launch a pre-emptive strike. I think in North Korea they take this very seriously indeed, because they’ve seen what the Trump administration has done in Syria … and they would fear that the US would do the same to them” (Andrew Green, “North Korea threatened nuclear strike against Australia if it doesn’t stop “blindly toeing US line””, ABC News, 23 April, 217: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-22/north-korea-accuses-australia-of-blindly-following-the-us/8464252 ).
Australia and the World would be better served if Australia sought to encourage a pragmatic, China-mediated and China-guaranteed North Korea –South Korea rapprochement that would obviate North Korea’s present perception that it needs nuclear weapons. And then the World could turn its attention to US-, UK- and Australia-backed nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, racist Zionist-run, democracy-by –genocide Apartheid Israel that reportedly has 400 nuclear bombs, that (unlike Iran) refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), that (unlike North Korea) refuses to ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which has invaded a dozen countries and routinely bombs other countries when it chooses to (Korea and Iran have not invaded any other country for centuries) (see “Nuclear weapons ban , end poverty & reverse climate change”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/nuclear-weapons-ban ).
Former Australian PM, the late Malcolm Fraser, warned against US lackey Australian jingoism after WikiLeaks revealed that PM Kevin Rudd had suggested the possibility of a US war with China (the biggest destination for Australian exports) if it didn’t play ball and that the Australian Ambassador to Washington, Kim Beazley, indicated to the Americans that Australian troops would be involved in such an eventuality . Malcolm Fraser was horrified and recalled that when the US was threatening war against China in the1950s, the then PM, conservative Robert Menzies, declared that Australian forces would not be involved in such a war (Malcolm Fraser “Slavish devotion to the US a foreign policy folly for Australia”, The Age On-line, National Times, 14 December 2010: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/slavish-devotion-to-the-us-a-foreign-policy-folly-for-australia-20101213-18vec.html ).
All praise to truth-telling Australian journalist Yassmin Abdel-Magied. By deleting her truthful post she has lived to fight another day in serial war criminal, jingoistic, US lackey, politically correct racist (PC racist) Australia. And her truthful post lives on: “Lest we forget (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine)”. Lest we forget all the victims of war, all the victims of the ongoing US War on Muslims, and in particular the people of a famine-wracked swathe of countries from Nigeria to Yemen in which 20 million are presently facing famine and mass starvation. Australia is presently complicit in the US bombing of starving Somalia and starving Yemen, countries with populations (50% children) of 11.2 million and 27.9 million, respectively ( “Famine “largest humanitarian crisis the history of the UN””, Al Jazeera, 11 March 2017: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/03/famine-united-nations-170310234132946.html ).
History ignored yields history repeated. Holocaust ignored yields holocaust repeated. Genocide ignored yields genocide repeated. Indeed genocide ignoring and holocaust ignoring are far, far worse than repugnant genocide denial and holocaust denial because at least the latter permit refutation and public debate ( Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes a succinct history of every country and is now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ and Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2008 edition that is now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ).
Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. No more war – please tell everyone you can.
28 April 2017